Commercially available flexible displays are generally limited to organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and electronic-ink (e-ink) emitter based technologies due to the maturity of the manufacturing process, power consumption, and resulting color quality. In order to produce different colors on displays such as these, each pixel of the display may be a combination of sub-pixels that provide red, green, and blue (RGB) light. It is to be appreciated that the individual RGB color cells are not visible to the naked eye, but instead, are viewed as a local area (e.g., about 900 μm2 in size) of a particular color based on the combinatorial percentage of RGB emitted. In some displays, blacks are produced by a black substrate below the RGB light sources.
OLEDs in particular offer a very high color gamut, greater than 400 dots per inch (dpi) resolution and high definition (HD) video quality, but they are power inefficient when displaying white backgrounds or when active in bright sunlight environments. Typically, to produce a white background, each of the sub-pixel colors are turned on to form the white light. As such, a significant amount of power is used. E-ink technologies are more power efficient and enables 4096 colors and 16 colors of grayscale in bright sunlight environments. However, the resolution is limited to 75 dpi and responsivity of 15 frames per second.
In order to overcome the power consumption issues while still providing a responsive display technology, some attempts have been made to fabricate displays that include the use of micro-LEDs, chalcogenide and quantum dots. These attempts aim to reduce the power consumption of the light sources, while still obtaining a wide color gamut and fast responsivity. However, the problem with producing a white background remains since all sub-pixels still need to be active to produce the white color.
Furthermore, certain colored LEDs or OLEDs are more efficient than other colors or harder to manufacture. Since multiple colors are needed for each pixel (e.g., RGB), power inefficient LEDs may still need to be used. The requirement to use inefficient light sources may limit attempts to reduce power consumption in the display.